Hercules 3.03 announcement

Jay Maynard

Dec 21, 2005

The long-awaited Hercules version 3.03 is now available for download.

What's new in release 3.03
Release date: 20 December 2005

Native Windows version no longer requires Cygwin (David "Fish" Trout,
Roger Bowler, Ivan Warren)
SMP host integrity fixes (Greg Smith, David "Fish" Trout, Bob Deblier)
ALS5, z9 and other architectural enhancements (Roger Bowler, Bernard
van der Helm, Jan Jaeger, David "Fish" Trout)
Restructured cryptographic support no longer depends on libgcrypt
(Bernard van der Helm, Roger Bowler, Ivan Warren)
Support emulation of up to 32 CPUs; maximum without special build
options now 8 (Ivan Warren)
Enhanced semigraphical control panel now uses all of larger console
windows (Greg Smith, David "Fish" Trout)
Many emulation fixes (Roger Bowler, Jan Jaeger, Bernard van der Helm,
David "Fish" Trout, Greg Smith, Ivan Warren, Andy Styles,
John Decker)
CMPSC fixes now produce identical results with real systems
(Jacques Dilbert, Bernard van der Helm)
Integrated 1052-C / 3215-C console support (Jan Jaeger)
tapecopy support for writing as well as reading tapes (Jay Maynard)

While the Cygwin version is still available, it should be noted that there
is a known problem with the built-in HTTP server in that version only. This
problem does not affect the versions built for any other OS. When a fix is
found, the packages for Cygwin will be replaced, and the source tarball will
be updated as well. The native Windows version will work just fine in a
Cygwin environment, and is not subject to this problem, although changes to
the configuration file may be necessary.

The SMP host integrity fixes in this version now allow reliable, accurate
emulation of SMP systems on SMP x86 and AMD64 hosts. At present, SMP Mac OS
X hosts do not have the facilities needed to take advantage of this
enhancement; thus, emulation of SMP systems on Macs is discouraged.
--
Jay Maynard, K5ZC
http://www.conmicro.cx
http://www.tronguy.net (Yes, that's me!)
http://jmaynard.livejournal.com

3:21 am

Re: Hercules 3.03 announcement

Jay Maynard

Dec 21, 2005

On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 09:21:54PM -0600, Jay Maynard wrote:
> The long-awaited Hercules version 3.03 is now available for download.

Boy, that was stupid. In all of that, I forgot to say where to find it.

With the release of version 3.03, the Hercules site has moved to its own
domain: http://www.hercules-390.org . The old URLs will continue to work for
the foreseeable future, but I strongly rcommend that those of you with links
to the Hercules pages change them to the new domain.

For those of you following the tree on CVS, the CVS server is also reachable
through the new domain, as well, at cvs.hercules-390.org .
--
Jay Maynard, K5ZC
http://www.conmicro.cx
http://www.tronguy.net (Yes, that's me!)
http://jmaynard.livejournal.com

3:25 am

Hercules 3.03 download statistics

Jay Maynard

Dec 29, 2005

For the first week since the announcement:

Rank Count Size Filename
1 851 1.42 GB /hercules-3.03-native.exe
2 612 1.36 GB /hercules-3.03-native.msi
3 500 833.85 MB /hercules-3.03.tar.gz
4 309 508.52 MB /hercules-3.03-1.i686.rpm
5 232 368.13 MB /hercules-3.03-cygwin-p4.exe
6 185 310.06 MB /hercules-3.03-cygwin-i686.exe
7 65 125.93 MB /hercules-3.03-cygwin-i586.exe
8 72 121.19 MB /hercules-3.03-1.src.rpm
9 47 80.16 MB /hercules-3.03-panther.dmg
10 55 77.54 MB /hercules-3.03-tiger.dmg
--------------------
2928 5.15 GB Total
--
Jay Maynard, K5ZC
http://www.conmicro.cx
http://www.tronguy.net (Yes, that's me!)
http://jmaynard.livejournal.com

3:10 am

Hercules 3.03.1 announcement

Jay Maynard

Dec 31, 2005

What's new in release 3.03.1
Release date: 30 December 2005

Fix translation exception bug that was causing some Linux kernels to
panic (Fabrizio Calabretta, Greg Smith, Ivan Warren)
TOD Clock-Steering Facility (Jan Jaeger, Bernard van der Helm)
Fix bug in shadow file filename processing on native Windows (David
"Fish" Trout)
Performance improvements in TM instruction family (Bernard van der
Helm)
Support for Linux zipl LOADPARM of PROMPT (Jan Jaeger)

This is a maintenance release. If you're not affected by the bugs in the
What's New, then there's no need to upgrade (although it shouldn't be an
issue if you do).

There is one known bug that affects the semigraphical control panel in this
release (and that was present in 3.03, as well). Attempting to reassign or
reopen a file assigned to an emulated I/O device will instead always modify
the first device in the list. This bug has been corrected in current CVS,
and the fix will be contained in the next release. The workaround in 3.03
and 3.03.1 is to hit escape and use the command-line devinit command to
modify the device.

Hercules 3.03 has been downloaded over 3400 times in the 10 days since its
release. There are now right at 5000 members of the main hercules-390
mailing list. To all of its users, and all of the folks who have contributed
ideas, code, and testing to help make Hercules what it is today - the most
widely used mainframe emulator in the world - I'd like to extend my thanks,
and my hope that Hercules will continue to serve your needs in 2006 and
beyond.
--
Jay Maynard, K5ZC http://www.conmicro.cx
http://www.hercules-390.org http://www.tronguy.net
http://jmaynard.livejournal.com (Yes, that's me!)

3:30 am